NJD

Do you have a lot of computer type equipment, or anything with a switched-mode power supply? (CD players etc) These all have mains filters with class-Y capacitors, and each of them leaks a small amount of current to earth (about 700uA). Add a lot of these together and you have a situation which will trip an RCD. (The IEE wiring regs has a special section for computer rooms for exactly this problem). Also, check that all your neutrals go back to the right place. If the sound and lighting neutrals are connected together any any point, then it will trip your RCD even though you have no fault.

Don't shoot the messenger! I designed a sound limiter (the Eagle one), so I'm wise to most of the techniques to circumvent them, like turning on all the lighting and tripping it a good few times whilst setting up, so that the switch-on surge welds the relay contacts, but the real problem is council officials. (Some installers have made a few silly mistakes, like installing the microphone so that the cheering from customers watching football on TV trips it) Having spoken to many installers, it appears that the number of council officials that have any idea how to set up a sound limiter are

QUOTE Any suggestions for good DMX Dimmer Packs that have this capability....im working to a budget lol, if that helps...i want something that will basically do the job. Just thought I'd mention we've just brought out a couple of DMX dimmer packs: 4-channel, 10Amps per channel, part code DPX4/10. There's a version with terminal blocks and one with IEC sockets, and M10 bushes on the back so it can be bolted to stands and truss. Easy access to fuses, and the triacs can be changed without soldering.

Shouldn't this be in another section? QUOTE I have a datamoon at present which is not lighting the lamp correctly it comes on and then constantly blinks on and off any idea whats wrong. Anyway. Does the red LED go on and off as well? Does the Datamoon go through its set-up procedure when the lamp turns on again? If it DOESN'T then suspect the relay, or a bad contact in the circuit between the relay and the lampholder, or in the lampholder itself. If it DOES then suspect the 5V regulator or the microprocessor (perhaps it need re-seating in its socket) By the way, two things

Couldn't find a British-made Datamoon, but the weights are as follows: British-made: 8.0kg Indian-made: 9.1kg Chinese-made: 7.9kg Here's a result for you: today I re-drew the bracket, so that it is now 10mm longer, and will go round the ends, and I specified 2mm steel so it won't bend. The bad news is that we won't see them until March. They will be 8.0kg with the new handle. QUOTE How much can you get them for today? I want one. One what?

QUOTE would it be possibe to buy four gobo wheels all the same shade? I seem to have lots of different shedes of blue and red. We've been building the Datamoon for 12 years now. In that time it's been manufactured in 3 different factories, and our original dichroic filter supplier has gone out of business. You can buy replacement filters at 96p+VAT each. Postage and packing on spare parts orders is £3.50+VAT. If you want to send your gobo plates back, we won't charge for fitting the new filters. I'll weigh a British Datamoon, an Indian one, and a Chinese one tomorrow, and settle t

To answer a few questions. . . There's a HUGE cost saving in manufacturing in China - hence the dramatic reductions in price of the Datamoon, Spectre, DMX250 over the last two years. I have only briefly seen the other units mentioned. You can tell if glass is dichroic by looking at the light that reflects off it. Look at the light reflecting at an angle off the filter, with the lights off. A blue dichroic filter will reflect yellow, a blue coloured-glass filter will always look blue. (The green filter reflects magenta, and the red filter cyan). Having seen a few Chinese lighting ef

Thanks for the input. Any more comments are always welcome. The thing about metal halide lamps is that the arc is generally quite large, so it doesn't suit products with 12mm gobos very well, although it's fine for products with 28mm gobos. Focusing isn't a problem, getting all the light from the lamp to go through the gobo is. Whoever said that the transformer and the ballast cost about the same is correct, but there's other bits in the system which aren't cheap: firstly, you can't run the electronics off the ballast, so there's another transformer for the electronics. Then there's the

QUOTE Undoubtedly the Spectre is capable of a lot more intense colours, somehow, however the bulbs it uses are extremely expensive and additionally the whole unit is not very successful at lighting an audience space, more appropriate for stage use only. Also the controller for the Spectre used to be ludicrously expensive. We did design it for stage use! but I'd agree with Chris that it does find use elsewhere - there are currently 42 of them lighting the columns and the bell tower of Nottingham Council House. Oddly enough, the first prototype Spectre had R7 linear lamps, but they don

So what does everybody think about metal-halide lamps? How much extra would you pay for a metal-halide version of your favourite effect?

Would a product plug be bad etiquette? If not, then I can tell you that Spectres are now available in a kit: 2 Spectres, 1 SFC hand-held controller, and all the leads in a flight-case. (so you don't have to pay extra for the controller)

If you must use the capsule lamp in the aluminium reflector, then keep that Brasso handy. Where we use a fixed reflector (for the CSS575 lamp) we repolish the reflector with brasso whenever a product is returned for service - it make a huge difference!

I can only speak for NJD lights. I wouldn't recommend the use of an M33 because: 1. its colour temperature is 3200K against 3400K for a A1/259. That's already 23% down on light output. 2. The M33 has a larger filament, which means it is more difficult to focus the light down on a small gobo. 3. The A1/259 filament is aligned with the reflector during manufacture to ensure that as much light as possible goes through a 12mm diameter circle 32mm infront of the lamp (that's part of the specification). It was originally designed as a 16mm film projector lamp. It is therefore ideally suited

We had a lot of trouble with A1/259s a few years ago suffering from what is known as a "moly failure" I forget which manufacturer they were from [the electrical connection through the glass is a piece of metal tape made from molybdenum, and the weld to the pins failed]. I wonder if lamps made at the same time are still finding their way into retail. If a lamp fails open circuit, but the filament is completely intact then it is probably a "moly failure" and it is a manufacturing fault - the supplier should replace it. If the lamp has a premature demise with the usual melted filament then

Comments on the strobe effect have been noted. It's only a strobe in VERY early ones, it was changed to a flash-to-sound in about 1996, so it is unlikely to flash more than 4 times a second (=240bpm), so shouldn't disturb the epileptics. I got my info on photosensitive epilepsy from this website: http://www.epilepsynse.org.uk/pages/info/l...flets/photo.cfm I also read somewhere that the synchronizing of light to sound can provoke a seizure, but I haven't seen that mentioned again. By the way, whoever thought it was "Altai Wirral" is on the wrong side of the Mersey! Head office